


The Shadow

by JaceRMontague



Series: 30k in 30 days [11]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Artists, F/F, Students, advertising students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8531590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaceRMontague/pseuds/JaceRMontague
Summary: Regina Mills lives and breathes advertising. She is one of the most outstanding students the college has ever seen, so much so that one of her lecturers had sent off a faux company advertisement to the company's design team itself and Regina has been offered the chance to create an actual  campaign for them. Emma Swan is in the college's other advertising course. She has been told almost every lecture about the amazing artist in the other class who had got themselves a live brief with a nationwide company.Neither had spoken to one another but that changes when Emma finds a loophole in her work experience guidlines and ends up having to shadow Regina for thirty hours.





	

Regina glanced up briefly when she heard a soft knocking on the studio door before turning back to face the mac in front of her. She turned up her music slightly, whoever was on the other side of the door was no interest to her – just another distraction while she tried to complete an advertising campaign for one of the most iconic paint companies in the country – it was rare that they outsourced their work to an external designer, let alone a student. However, Regina’s lecturer had sent some of Regina’s faux-campaign artwork for that company to them and they had replied with an actual brief and budget.

So here she was, sitting in the college studio on a Wednesday morning – working on polishing the artwork to the best as she could on her day off. She was being paid $5000 for the artwork alone. If she did well and the ad campaign took off she was set up with a job for life. Putting the artwork up in public would be covered by the insane budget. She couldn’t believe people were willing to give her such a massive chance. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard these numbers and figures before – her father had been an incredibly skilled business man; a multi-millionaire. Her mother was a skilled commercial lawyer and had, too, made her own money. When Regina had told them she was going into the arts her father had been immensely proud of his daughter for making her own decisions, for being such an amazing artist. Her mother stopped talking to her for six months. Until Regina had gone home a week ago and had accidentally left the brief on the coffee table while she had gone to make herself a coffee while her laptop booted up. Suddenly her mother was very interested in Photoshop and advertising.

‘Regina wouldn’t mind?’ Regina heard over the sound of her music, automatically listening in on the conversation between the blonde teenager and Regina’s lecturer.

‘Would you, Regina?’  The lecturer prompted for an answer.

‘I apologise but I was so focused on getting this campaign finished that I wasn’t listening to your conversation, sir.’ The brunette replied as respectfully as she could, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. No matter what her lecturer and the blonde wanted it was already wasting Regina’s time. She knew the work wasn’t due for another week but she needed to allow for corrections and being dragged away from her work wasn’t helping her.

‘Emma here,’ the lecturer began, gesturing vaguely to the blonde stood in the doorway. ‘Needs work experience and has found a loophole that means her thirty hours can be signed off if she shadows someone who is working in the industry. IE myself, a lecturer working as a lecturer as well as working freelance outside of the college or, yourself. A student only months older than Emma. Who is working on all their coursework to the highest quality myself and the other art lecturers have seen produced by a student ever, while working on a campaign for one of the largest companies in the country. I said that you are probably much more interesting than I am and that you wouldn’t mind, would you.’

Regina could see the dare in her lecturer’s eyes. They had a great relationship, more colleges and friends than student and teacher. Regina had even collaborated on a gallery project with her lecturer just months before. She knew that he knew that Regina would love to say no, to spend all her time working and polishing her work, but that she couldn’t resist a dare. What she didn’t know was that her lecturer believed that this would be good for Regina, she would, eventually have to talk to the blonde, even if it was just to explain what she was doing and why, and Regina needed to talk to someone, besides himself he believed that Regina had spoken to few other people.

‘That would be- ‘Regina paused, wondering how she was going to phrase her refusal. She saw the glint of a dare in her lecturer’s eyes once more before sighing defeatedly ‘That would be okay, I suppose. But I’m working on an external ad campaign today so I won’t be the best conversationalist.’ She muttered, glancing a from her lecturer to the blonde who looked utterly relieved and joyous at Regina allowing her to watch her work. Regina wished the blonde didn’t look like that, her green eyes were sparkling and the crooked smile on the pale face made Regina’s brain short-circuit a little.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll just sit quiet and watch you’ Emma said as she scuffed her converse against the carpeted floor.

 ‘Okay.’ Regina shrugged as she turned back to the computer, unlocking it and getting back to work, zooming in until she was working in a miniscule scale; she was zoomed in to the millimetre and was erasing an outline so small that if the artwork was zoomed out it would have been invisible to the naked eye. But Regina knew it was there and it needed to go. She didn’t tear her gaze away from the screen as saw Emma move into her peripheral vision and sit on the chair next to her.

To her credit, Emma didn’t talk while Regina was working. She wrote down a list of questions she had in a notebook and waited for Regina to tear her focus away from the screen. Regina had an incredible focus, Emma had to give her that. Emma had heard of Regina; well, she’d been told about a girl in the other advertising class who had been selected to design and produce artwork for a major company. She hadn’t been told the girl or the company, and if she was being honest with herself, she had thought that the lecturers had been exaggerating to try to improve her class’ work ethic. She had seen Regina in the corridors though, usually Regina had her head down, headphones on and was almost always carrying a sketchpad with a pocket full of pens. Emma had liked Regina ever since she had first seen her when the two of them were in the queue to get their ID cards printed at the start of the year, though she had never had the chance to work with, or even talk to, the brunette. When the lecturer had suggested that she shadow Regina for a working week, Emma’s heart simultatiously rose and sunk, but she hadn’t argued and neither had Regina even though Emma could see the conflict in Regina’s astoundingly captivating coffee coloured eyes when the lecturer had asked if Regina minded Emma shadowing her.

Within half an hour of Emma sitting down the lecturer had left the studio to cover an animation lecture and had left the two girls sitting in silence.

Two and a half hours after sitting down beside the brunette Emma could feel herself getting hungry, she needed some food before her stomach growled in the silent classroom and embarrassed her.

She decided to break the silence; she’d offer Regina a coffee and some food to soften the blow of her interrupting the brunettes work.

‘Um, I’m going to go and get some lunch and a coffee, do you want me to bring you anything back?’

Regina looked at the clock and saw it was approaching her usual one o’clock lunch.

‘Give me a few minutes to save this and lock the desktop and I’ll join you, if that’s okay?’ Regina asked, she knew that the girl sitting next to her was meant to be shadowing her but she didn’t want to impose herself upon the blonde if she was only going to get food to get away from the silence.

‘That’s good by me.’ Emma replied with a nod and a smile. She watched as Regina went through the process of saving the work to her memory stick, an external hard-drive as well as transferring a copy onto the laptop that sat next to Regina on the desk.

Regina locked the desktop, placed a sticky note on the screen reading that the computer was out of use – this was a useful trick she had picked up last year to stop people who walked into the studio looking for a max to use. She put the memory stick and hard drive into her bag and turned to Emma.

‘You ready to go?’

Emma nodded and they both stood up, they headed towards the canteen and picked their lunches; Regina picked up a light salad and mango juice whereas Emma grabbed a grilled cheese and a milkshake. The two sat at a table hidden behind a partition wall between the main canteen and the coffee shop.

‘I’m sorry that I haven’t spoken since you sat down; it’d just this work is incredibly important and I need it to be perfect.’

‘Yeah, no, I understand. I heard you were working for that paint company, it’s okay.’  


Regina gave a smile.

‘I was you writing while I worked.’ She remarked, spinning her fork aimlessly in the plastic salad pot.

‘Oh, it’s just some questions I want to ask about what you were doing. I didn’t want to interrupt you while you worked though.’

Regina fell silent for a second, completely taken aback by how this girl who she had never met before had put aside her own questions to allow Regina to work. In terms of working to a deadline and working with an artist, this was invaluable and a trait that she wished everyone else she knew would pick up.

Then she decided something.

‘If, when I’m working, you want to ask me a question. Just go for it. I’ll be finished with this before college closes today and I’ll send it off and if they want any corrections made ill have them done within the week. I know you’re probably not interested in it and you’re only shadowing because you need thirty hours work experience but I have other work you can look at and ask about, too. If you think anything will help you in your own course just let me know.’

Emma grinned.

‘No, no. I’m interested. I saw the standard you’re working at and you know so much about photoshop that I don’t. It’s so intriguing.’ Emma admitted.

The two finished their lunches and went back to the studio, Regina got back onto photoshop and this time Emma asked questions and Regina answered them as best as she could.

Regina enjoyed this. Not just the teaching Emma tricks and tools and keyboard shortcuts, but the having someone to talk to.

By the third day Emma had completed her thirty hours work experience; although it should have taken a week Regina was in the studio from the moment the college opened at 6:30am until it shut late in the evening.

Regina had expected that she wouldn’t see Emma again after that except in college corridors or the canteen at lunch but when Emma had turned up at 7am on the Thursday Regina was surprised and couldn’t supress her happiness at seeing the blonde sitting at her side, watching as she made the corrections to the advertising campaign.

‘I didn’t think you’d be back.’ Regina admitted as Emma sat down in her usual seat next to Regina.

Emma just shrugged and span lightly on her chair.

‘What’re you doing today?’

‘Final corrections for the Ad campaign. When that’s finished, I’m going to work on a design report for the editorial magazine piece I was doing yesterday.’

‘Sounds good.’

Emma sat taking notes and asking questions while Regina worked.

That evening the two of them sat on the bus, talking about things outside of Photoshop, ad campaigns, paint and magazine front covers. They spoke of books they had read, films they had watched, and the general mundanity of life.

A stop before Emma was due to get off the bus she fell silent, she looked at Regina as if she were contemplating something.

‘What’s wrong, Emma?’

‘I have one more question.’ The blonde asked, the confident mask she had been wearing ever since their first exchanging of words faltering for the first time.

‘Go on.’ Regina prompted

‘Would you care to join me on a date at some point?’

‘I would love to.’ Regina replied with a grin, watching as the blonde stood up and walked to the front of the bus, just hitting the button on time to get off at her usual stop.

It had taken three weeks to find a gap in Regina’s schedule. From meetings with the company that she had been designing for, to dinners with her mother about her impeding success as a designer, Regina had barely enough time to eat, never mind get ready for, and go on, a date

And so, three weeks after Emma had completed an extra day’s work experience, she stood at the corner of Regina’s street, waiting for the brunette to make an appearance. When she did she felt her heart bounce off her ribcage. Regina was stunning, she was dressed casually in skinny jeans and a plaid button up as was Emma’s request but she looked drop dead gorgeous nonetheless.

Regina reached Emma and the two linked arms, walking slowly as they spoke to one another about what the last three weeks had entailed for them both as neither of them had, despite the nightly text messages, seen one another in the flesh since they had last caught the bus together – now that Emma had fallen back into her regular timetable, there was no cross over between the two of them.

Just as Emma was about to ask about what the paint company had thought of the final ad design, a taxi drove past,                 Regina’s advert plastered across the side of it.

‘Woah, that’s amazing.’ Emma whispered, placing her free hand on Regina’s linked arm and giving it a gentle squeeze.

‘Isn’t it just?’ Regina agreed.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There may not be an update tomorrow because some friends are trying to drag me out clubbing with them but i'm trying to get out of it. If i don't get out of it there will be two updates on sunday, hopefully.


End file.
